My favourite XCOM is XCOM: Enemy Unknown*, a pure and direct, no mess/no fuss modern-day remix of metagame-augmented turn-based tactics. My second-favourite XCOM is the polar opposite, XCOM 2 DLC War Of The Chosen, an absurd explosion of superheroics that throws internal logic to the wind.

The calendar's doors have been opened and the games inside have been eaten. But fear not, latecomer - we've reconstructed the list in this single post for easy re-consumption. Click on to discover the best games of 2017.

Back in the summer, I boldly declared that 'I will play XCOM 2: War Of The Chosen's daily challenge mode every day.' Er. Whoops. I've only played a handful since then, and I'm not alone there. Though the mode still pumps out a new challenge every day, it hasn't blossomed into a new religion in the same way The Binding of Isaac and Spelunky's daily…

We already knew that Pavonis Interactive, the team behind the RPS-approved, game-changing Long War mods for XCOM and XCOM 2, were working on a complete new game of their own, but seeing as Long War 2 has been in the wild for a while now, I thought I'd catch up with 'em about Terra Invicta. This takes the essential XCOM concept - humans fending off…

Though it suffers from having as many different tones as the last thirty years of Dulux catalogues sellotaped together, I found in my XCOM 2: War Of The Chosen review that the latest expansion for Firaxis' game is an extremely effective remix of, basically, everything. But there's one very small change in WOTC that I didn't mention - a tiny thing with massive, massive repercussions…

Who owns those odd voices? It's the RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show and guess what - we're all in the same room, with our actual bodies. Unprecedented. And there's a special guest this week too. Chris Bratt of Eurogamer joins us to talk about the alien-murdering of XCOM 2: War of the Chosen. It's a Brattcast! While Pip has been playing teen angst drama-llama…

I'd long suspected it, but it's nice to have tangible evidence: I am the best in the world at XCOM. For one moment of one day, on one of XCOM 2: War of the Chosen [official site]'s daily challenge maps. It could happen again another day, and, yeah, I guess this is going to be my life now.

As predicted, I spent most of the weekend playing XCOM 2: War of the Chosen [official site]. It's good to be back, fighting against the faux-benevolent burger-making overlords of future Earth, but I haven't actually made a great deal of progress in my new campaign. That's because there have been several new campaigns, and that's because I'm an idiot who can't resist the lure of…

The Steam Charts aren't, as you may have been led to expect, large sprawling maps depicting the locations of all the world's known steam. They were, but due to government pressure we've altered them to list the top ten selling games on Steam, in reverse order, like a rocket taking off.

Hark, it's the sweet vocal vibrations of the humble RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show. The lads (lads lads) are back from the bright lights of Gamescom and ready to chat hard about the games they saw. But Pip is only giving us a maximum of three words about each one. Madness. Never mind, we can talk more verbosely about the alien-shooting of the Destiny…

I had a whale of a time with XCOM 2: War of the Chosen [official site] (out today), despite finding its tonal ping-ponging between gritty resistance saga and preposterous superheroics a little jarring. Speaking of the latter, here's a video I made showing just how off-the-chain crazy the various new abilities, weapons and features can be. In the space of a single turn (the first…

Other sites will bombard you with "facts" and "details" about the top-selling games on Steam, but not us. We won't patronise you with such things. We know you're better than that, taller, more attractive than the readers of those sites. We know you know we know you better, and as such reach for higher, smarter, more eloquent brilliance.

Fallen cities swarming with the dangerous remnants of their human populations, alien battlefield commanders who resemble fantastical heroes, new rulesets for friendship and fear, and an actual active resistance out on the Geoscape. XCOM 2 [official site] is changing. The War of the Chosen is "definitely the biggest expansion we've ever done", lead designer Jake Solomon told us at E3. Introducing unique enemy champions doesn't…

Each year E3 rolls around like a giant evil worm, crushing all that's good and pure. BUT that worm also announces lots of exciting gaming news as it wreaks its carnage upon the Earth. Here we have gathered every announcement, reveal, and exciting new trailer that emerged from the barrage of screamed press conferences over the last few days. And lots of it looks rather…